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rvchima

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Everything posted by rvchima

  1. rvchima
    A former and much older colleague of mine retired to "the old folks home." I visited him a few years later. He was 85, president of the ski club, and had a large RC aircraft in progress on the dining room table. I told him I want to be like him when I grow up.
  2. rvchima
    The model is coming along beautifully! I am looking forward to seeing some of those cast cannons poking out of the gun ports. What a shame about the wet wood though. I am glad to hear that CAF models will replace it. I am totally on board with using power tools as needed. Proxxon's oscillating sander is great for small details as long as you make up your own self-adhesive sandpaper. Rod
  3. rvchima
    Many thanks to the folks who looked in. I hope that this build will help someone interested in Caldercraft models in the future.
  4. rvchima
    Marie Felling - Complete, 285 hours, 88 days Final pictures of the Marie Felling. It was fairly easy with the GRP hull and cabins, and somewhat monotonous with all the white metal pieces. It does make up into a beautiful model though and would be great for RC if you're into that.
  5. rvchima
    Building a Stand I built a new stand out of cherry and joined the corners with a Kreg jig. It was a little complicated clamping the ends to the rails, but it worked out OK. Parts I didn't Use Here are the parts that I didn't use. It seems like Caldercraft updates parts and leaves the old ones in the box. A nice sheet of plywood for the deck (laser cut deck included) Gratings for the aft deck (laser cut aft deck included) Lots of dowels and brass rod (I bought new brass for the railings) Several wood blocks Stanchions (I bought brass stanchions) Ladders (I built my own) Links for anchor chain (I bought a nice brass chain) Lots of other random white metal parts.
  6. rvchima
    The "sticky sticks" are called "Pic-n-stic".
  7. rvchima
    Ted, I posted some "What's in the Box" photos yesterday. I won't be able to start for 8-10 days, so you can get a good lead. Search for "airbrush holder sticks" on eBay or Amazon. Mine came disassembled and took an evening to put together. The EZ line worked very well but I am concerned that it could turn brittle with age. Get yourself a "Glue Looper" for applying CA to small parts. It's just a tiny PE loop that fits into an X-Acto handle and picks up a tiny drop of CA by capillary action. Also get yourself a PE bender - a 3" square aluminum "clamp" that holds the part down while you bend it around a square edge. Both available on Amazon or eBay. They sell "sticky sticks" for handling small parts. (That's not the right name, but it's all I can think of.) I think they're made for dentists, but model train builders use them. They look like those disposable micro paintbrushes but have a sticky glob on one end. I found that they had too much grab and frequently pulled parts back off after I thought the CA was dry, so I tossed mine. Instead, I have a roll of 3M double sided tape. I cut off a tiny piece and tape it over the end of a 1/8" balsa stick, then use that to pick up PE parts. I use it a few times then replace the tape. I have the book "Anatomy of the Ship, The Battleship Bismarck" by Stefan Draminski. It looks like a perfect reference for this model. I really can't see panel lines in any of the photos, but the drawings show them on the hull below the waterline and around the portholes fore and aft. Most of the upper hull has a few long, horizontal lines. I believe that's the armour belting. I will look into this later, but I don't usually get into such fine detail. Have fun with your build. I am looking forward to exchanging notes with you, and I suspect we'll see some more build logs pop up soon. Rod
  8. rvchima
    What's in the Box The box has a beautiful, full-color photo on the front. The box is packed like a new iPhone. Three boxes of beautiful plastic parts, a small box of resin parts, and a small box of eyes, rigging, and miscellaneous brass parts. Two full-color instruction manuals with details of every little part. More details than a LEGO kit. A full-sized 3-view of the model, suitable for framing. Six sheets of parts layout diagrams. Three huge bundles of sanded basswood planks. The Bismark has a plank on frame hull. The Prinz Eugen had a plastic hull that saved a lot of time, but hey, I like working with wood. Lots of plywood sheets of laser cut parts. Stencils for the bow-wave camoflage. Planked decking printed to scale! I planked the hull of my Prinz Eugen with 4 mm wide basswood. It looks good but it's 5x too wide for this scale. Fourteen sheet of photo etched brass, including an awesome nameplate for the display stand. That's what's in the box. I can hardly wait to get started, but I have some other commitments for the next week or so. Stay tuned.
  9. rvchima
    Back in 2020 I saw this post on MSW: 1:200 Bismarck - coming soon! The Bismarck kit was announced by Amati. I have built Amati kits before and know that they are top quality. I was working on an Aeronaut model of the Prinz Eugen heavy cruiser at the time - not a great kit but it turned out OK. I started checking the Amati site every few days, and over a year later I finally found it offered for sale on agesofsail.com. I ordered it immediately and am about ready to start.
  10. rvchima
    Ted, I will be starting this kit soon and will be following your build log with great interest. Rod
  11. rvchima
    Two More Things to Build Two laminated towing beams will protect the equipment on the aft deck.
  12. rvchima
    A Bunch of Photos Before Final Assembly - Aft Cabin I didn't use the color scheme from the original Marie Felling either. Looks like I have some touch up to do on that rail! Watch out for that last step! Other build logs have noticed that the stairs in the main cabin don't reach the upper deck - the castings are about two steps short. I didn't notice until I had built the first set, and I wasn't about to build them again. The towing hooks and release levers would actually work if they were made of something stronger. The kit does not show these beams over the skylights but another photo of the actual ship does. I bent them from some thick copper rod.
  13. rvchima
    A Bunch of Photos Before Final Assembly - Forward Cabin, Mast, and Lifeboat The instructions call for a tall mast with three lights, a yard arm for signal flags, a derrick, a lifeboat, and a searchlight on top of the bridge. There are a few old photos of the Marie Felling around. This one shows a low mast, one light (maybe?), no yard arm, no derrick, life rafts, and no searchlight. It turns out that the owner of Caldercraft wasn't too keen on scale details as long as the model looked somewhat like the real thing. I mostly went by the instructions but made some changes for practical reasons. The instructions call for the mast to extend 370 mm above the boat deck, making the model 650 mm (25.5") high. I cut the mast down about 100 mm and removed the junk on top. The model now stands 550 mm (21.5") high. I kept the derrick. It is rigged with a 5:1 pulley system for the boat but a 1:1 pulley for the boom. I wonder if you could really handle that boom with a simple pulley? The lifeboat comes as two vacuum formed halves, with nice gratings but white metal oars, oar locks, and rudder. I added wooden seats and built a wooden rudder and oars.
  14. rvchima
    A Bunch of Photos Before Final Assembly - Hull The rope fender is by Caldercraft. I soaked it in coffee to darken the color. Now my ship smells like a Starbucks. I made the Marie Felling text using a Brother label maker, white on clear. You can see the clear if you look closely but it's not bad. The tires are by Amati. They seem small to me but at 1:32 scale they are about thee size of the tires on my Honda CRV. I held the line with a spring clamp while I tied them in place. Power steering! The ship had a small steam engine inside a cabin that will be installed at the right. It drove chains that looped around the aft deck, through a couple of "spring boxes", and to the tiller under the grating on the left. The steam engine was controlled by the ship's wheel. Mistake 1: I installed the aft grating long before the steering chains, so I had to fish the chains underneath and pin them through the grating. Mistake 2: The pulleys each comprised 3 cast pieces that I cleaned up, painted, and assembled. Then I discovered that the supplied chain didn't fit. I eventually glued the pulley wheels solid and drilled out one side to fit the chain.
  15. rvchima
    Stanchions and Railings The kit includes single-ball stanchions for the searchlight deck, 2-ball stanchions for the main deck, and lots of nice, 1.5 mm diameter brass rod. Every build log mentioned above says that that the cast metal stanchions are just too flimsy, but one builder said that his kit came with brass stanchions, and another managed to buy replacements. Caldercraft does sell brass stanchions the correct height so I ordered some a while ago. I ordered 3-ball stanchions for the main deck, planning to cut off the top ball and cap it with a wood railing. When it was time to install them I discovered that the 3-ball stanchions had 1 mm holes, and the single-ball stanchions have .02" (.51 mm) holes, both too small for my brass rod. I ended up buying more brass rod the correct diameters. Here's a sample of the cast stanchions at the top and the brass stanchions below. I drilled mounting holes in the deck and assembled the railings in place. I lifted the entire rail assembly from the deck and sprayed it separately. The cap rails were made from some scrap mahogany using this jig to hold each piece while I rounded the edges.
  16. rvchima
    Searchlight Deck Ladder The cast metal pieces for the ladder to the searchlight deck came out of the molds bent, cracked, and with lots of flash. I thought it would be easier to build my own from some square brass tubing and brass rod. It came out pretty nice.
  17. rvchima
    Yves, This looks like an amazing kit. I suppose that you need something to do while your 3-D parts are printing! I had never heard of CAF models but a quick search turned up their copyright infringement issues. I'm glad that they got it sorted out. Are you concerned that they might disappear before you get all five sessions? Rod
  18. rvchima
    Making Progress But More to Do Here's everything stacked up. You can see the boat deck attached to atop the forward cabin now. Most of the small parts have been attached to the deck, but the cabins and bridge are all separate. Lest you think that I'm almost finished, here are all the parts that I still have to complete.
  19. rvchima
    Miscellaneous Small Parts and Bridge, 195 hours Map and flag chest, two hatches, and stern companionway ready to spray. Four ladders with white metal sides. The kit includes laser-cut ply steps but I used some scrap mahogany. Parts for the skylights. I sure dreaded cleaning up all that white metal ... but it only took a few hours. Ten vents ready to paint. The kit has printed plywood for the bridge. I covered those pieces inside and out with cherry, and used more mahogany for the rails. There were obviously lots of other little parts to clean and paint.
  20. rvchima
    Note to Self: Don't Use White Metal for Structural Parts The forward cabin has a boat deck mounted on top with 8 little pillars made of white metal. I aligned the wooden deck and cabin, and carefully drilled the 8 holes through both pieces. Then I epoxied the pillars to the cabin, and later to the deck, and clamped everything lightly. Every thing seemed to go OK, but the next day, because of the curvature of the cabin, two pillars had snapped in half and two more had pulled away from the deck. After a few choice swear words I came up with an easy repair. First I cut the remaining pillars, separated the cabin and deck, and removed the pillar parts from the deck. I had to fill the holes and repaint the bottom of the deck. Next I filed the pillars remaining on the cabin down to the base, and drilled through the center to fit a narrow nail. I put nails into all 8 holes and flipped the cabin upside down over a narrow board on my bench, so that the nail heads were all level. Then I epoxied all the nails from the inside of the cabin. When that was dry I flipped the cabin upright and reglued the deck. Poor photo of some broken pillars. The cabin with new pillars made with nails. I'll post a photo with the deck in a minute. The kit comes with a big sheet of acetate for windows, but I painted some styrene black and glued it inside with RC cabin glue.
  21. rvchima
    Yves, I just came across this log and want to join in on the fun. I will be following along. The model is just beautiful, and it's fascinating that everything is printed right there in front of you. Rod
  22. rvchima
    Moving Right Along, 117 hours Here is everything stacked up so far. It seemed like this was going pretty fast but then I looked at how many white metal pieces are left ... And here's my dog Loki admiring my work.
  23. rvchima
    Miscellaneous Small Parts Caldercraft includes several mini-kits for various pieces of equipment. Everything is white metal, which often gets bent when it is removed from the mold. Or in shipping. Or if you look at it crossly. This steam engine for the capstan took a bit of straightening out and cleaning up. Here's the finished capstan. The anchor winch is very nice. I experimented with weathering the bollards but ended up repainting them. The instructions call for two water tanks to be made from certain blocks of wood. The parts list gives the dimensions for those blocks but none of the blocks that came with the kit were close. I had some white Azek trim in a good thickness and cut my own. The white metal straps were much too long so I built new ones out of styrene strips. The tanks were painted with a spray color called "Iron," which looks pretty convincing in reality. These two grates go in the top of the rear cabin. I'll probably paint these "Iron" too.
  24. rvchima
    Cabin Details I worked on cabin details while waiting for paint to dry. The GRP cabins tend to bend inwards and required internal bracing. Then portholes, doors, and other details were attached. Portholes were bored with a step drill that basically grinds its way through the GRP with minimal splintering. The forward cabin has a lot of portholes, but there doesn't seem to be any doors! None of the 3 build logs listed above has mentioned that. Maybe the door is in the hidden space in the back? The rear cabin has a lot of portholes and SEVEN doors. It also has 2 stairwells that had to be cut out and framed in from the inside. Here's how I framed the stairwell. I will glue them in after painting. Here's how everything will fit together.
  25. rvchima
    Paint Stripping, Experiments, and Repainting The Rustoleum primer did not stick to the GRP hull. This is what the hull looked like where it moved on my foam-covered stand. Soon after I made my last post I removed most of the primer using mineral spirits and coarse steel wool. The job only took a couple of hours wasn't as messy as I expected. I couldn't get everything and decided to leave the bulwarks primed. Here's the hull after stripping. In the meantime I tested several kinds of paint on styrene sheet. Rustoleum 2X gray primer, the primer that I had trouble with. Later I put Krylon white primer over it to make sure that they were compatible. They were. Rustoleum Colonial Red. I really like this color for anti-fouling paint on the bottoms of hulls, but I've already used it on three other models. Krylon Fusion gloss black. Krylon Colormaster white primer. Krylon Fusion Satin Brick, an alternative for the bottom of the hull. Next I tried to scratch each sample with a fingernail and then a hobby knife. They were all VERY difficult to scratch. So my original problem was the GRP. I still had two GRP superstructure components that had not been cleaned or painted. I cleaned one very carefully with Dawn and then TSP, then sprayed one face of each component with Rustoleum primer. The next day BOTH components scratched easily; so the problem was not lack of cleaning - Rustoleum simply does not stick to the GRP. I stripped both of those components. I re-primed the hull with Krylon Fusion gray primer. This is my high-tech spray booth, AKA garage. I painted the lower hull with 3 coats of Krylon Fusion Satin Brick, masked the water line with Tamiya masking tape, and painted the upper hull with Krylon Fusion gloss black. Everything came out perfectly and does not scratch. Here's the hull on the stand. You can see some of my other interests in the background. I still love this view. Now time to clean up the garage.

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